Raymond Carver Quotes

Quotes about:

• Life and death matters, yes. And the question of how to behave in this world, how to go in the face of everything. Time is short and the water is rising.

  Raymond Carver

  Life And Death, Water, Rising

  106 Copy quote

• It's possible, in a poem or short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things—a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring—with immense, even startling power.

  Raymond Carver

  Writing, Insightful, Stories

  Raymond Carver (2015). “Fires: Essays, Poems, Stories”, p.25, Vintage

  102 Copy quote

• That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones.

  Raymond Carver

  Writing

  Raymond Carver (2015). “Call If You Need Me: The Uncollected Fiction and Other Prose”, p.102, Vintage

  104 Copy quote

• there isn't enough of anything as long as we live. But at intervals a sweetness appears and, given a chance prevails.

  Raymond Carver

  Long, Chance, Enough

  Raymond Carver (2015). “All of Us: The Collected Poems”, p.253, Vintage

  113 Copy quote

• And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.

  Raymond Carver

  I Love You, Want, Earth

  Raymond Carver (2015). “All of Us: The Collected Poems”, p.424, Vintage

  99 Copy quote

• Write about what you know, and what do you know better than your own secrets?

  Raymond Carver

  Writing, Secret, Knows

  Raymond Carver, Marshall Bruce Gentry, William L. Stull (1990). “Conversations with Raymond Carver”, p.41, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  105 Copy quote

• If we're lucky, writer and reader alike, we'll finish the last line or two of a short story and then just sit for a minute, quietly. Ideally, we'll ponder what we've just written or read; maybe our hearts or intellects will have been moved off the peg just a little from where they were before. Our body temperature will have gone up, or down, by a degree. Then, breathing evenly and steadily once more, we'll collect ourselves, writers and readers alike, get up, "created of warm blood and nerves" as a Chekhov character puts it, and go on to the next thing: Life. Always life.

  Raymond Carver

  Writing, Heart, Character

  Raymond Carver (2016). “Where I'm Calling From”, p.14, Random House

  107 Copy quote

• Art doesn't have to do anything. It just has to be there for the fierce pleasure we take in doing it.

  Raymond Carver

  Art, Fierce, Pleasure

  Raymond Carver, Marshall Bruce Gentry, William L. Stull (1990). “Conversations with Raymond Carver”, p.52, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  52 Copy quote

• Dreams, you know, are what you wake up from.

  Raymond Carver

  Dream, Wake Up, Knows

  Raymond Carver (2015). “Cathedral”, p.172, Vintage

  73 Copy quote

• Get in, get out. Don't linger. Go on.

  Raymond Carver

  Goes On

  Raymond Carver (2015). “Fires: Essays, Poems, Stories”, p.23, Vintage

  9 Copy quote

• It ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we're talking about when we talk about love.

  Raymond Carver

  Talking, Ashamed, Feels

  Raymond Carver (2015). “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”, p.116, Vintage

  77 Copy quote

• It's strange. You never start out life with the intention of becoming a bankrupt or an alcoholic or a cheat and a thief. Or a liar.

  Raymond Carver

  Liars, Becoming, Thieves

  41 Copy quote

• I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyone's heart. I could hear the human noise we sat there making, not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark.

  Raymond Carver

  Love, Moving, Heart

  Raymond Carver (2015). “Where I'm Calling From: Selected Stories”, p.169, Vintage

  95 Copy quote

• There are significant moments in everyone's day that can make literature. That's what you ought to write about.

  Raymond Carver

  Writing, Literature, Crafts

  46 Copy quote

• The places where water comes together with other water. Those places stand out in my mind like holy places.

  Raymond Carver

  Water, Mind, Together

  Raymond Carver (2015). “Where Water Comes Together with Other Water: Poems”, p.26, Vintage

  74 Copy quote

• You've got to work with your mistakes until they look intended. Understand?

  Raymond Carver

  Mistake, Looks

  Raymond Carver (2015). “Cathedral”, p.148, Vintage

  34 Copy quote

• I'm always learning something. Learning never ends.

  Raymond Carver

  Ends, Always Learning

  Raymond Carver (2015). “Where I'm Calling From: Selected Stories”, p.329, Vintage

  8 Copy quote

• A man can go along obeying all the rules and then it don't matter a damn anymore.

  Raymond Carver

  Men, Matter, Damn

  Raymond Carver (2015). “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”, p.39, Vintage

  10 Copy quote

• He wondered if she wondered if he were watching her.

  Raymond Carver

  Ifs

  Raymond Carver (2015). “Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?”, p.194, Vintage

  64 Copy quote

• Anyone can express himself or herself, but what writers and poets want to do in their work, more than simply express themselves, is communicate.

  Raymond Carver

  Writing, Want, Poet

  Raymond Carver (2001). “Call If You Need Me: The Uncollected Fiction and Other Prose”, Vintage

  13 Copy quote

• Something’s died in me,” she goes. “It took a long time for it to do it, but it’s dead. You’ve killed something, just like you’d took an axe to it. Everything is dirt now.

  Raymond Carver

  Long, Dirt, Like You

  Raymond Carver (2015). “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”, p.25, Vintage

  16 Copy quote

• Woke up this morning with a terrific urge to lie in bed all day and read.

  Raymond Carver

  Morning, Lying, Book

  Raymond Carver (2015). “All of Us: The Collected Poems”, p.135, Vintage

  31 Copy quote

• It's akin to style, what I'm talking about, but it isn't style alone. It is the writer's particular and unmistakable signature on everything he writes. It is his world and no other. This is one of the things that distinguishes one writer from another. Not talent. There's plenty of that around. But a writer who has some special way of looking at things and who gives artistic expression to that way of looking: that writer may be around for a time.

  Raymond Carver

  Writing, Expression, Talking

  Raymond Carver (2015). “Call If You Need Me: The Uncollected Fiction and Other Prose”, p.99, Vintage

  32 Copy quote

• Every great or even every very good writer makes the world over according to his own specifications.

  Raymond Carver

  Writing, World, Very Good

  Raymond Carver (2015). “Fires: Essays, Poems, Stories”, p.23, Vintage

  28 Copy quote

• I've crossed some kind of invisible line. I feel as if I've come to a place I never thought I'd have to come to. And I don't know how I got here. It's a strange place. It's a place where a little harmless dreaming and then some sleepy, early-morning talk has led me into considerations of death and annihilation.

  Raymond Carver

  Dream, Morning, Insomnia

  Raymond Carver (2015). “Where I'm Calling From: Selected Stories”, p.391, Vintage

  59 Copy quote

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